Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Can you help us with ETS2 license plates?

We are working hard on finalizing Euro Truck Simulator 2 for release, but there are still some unfinished tasks which we would like to get done so that the game is released in great shape. One of the problems are correct and believable license plates on vehicles.

In our previous projects, usually the license plate was a part of a vehicle's texture, so there was no chance to dynamically alter it or pretend that the trucks and cars come from different countries. For Euro Truck 2, at first we thought about a system providing slightly more variety - have a small set of license plates for each country, and assign them around, but it turned out that too many people take it as an offense if they happen to see multiple vehicles in the world sharing the same license plate texture, not to speak about lack of variety.

In the end, we are about to bite the bullet and implement a system to be able to procedurally generate the license plates based on a set of rules for each country in the game.

See the image below to see an example of how this is setup for the Czech Republic (specifically these would be license plates for Prague from recent years). There is a background for the license plate ready to accept the letters and digits in a given pattern, and then we generate the "text" with the particular combination of letters and digits that follows the country's rules for license plates, picking the alphanumeric symbols from a font texture with font specific for the given country.

Our problem is that for some countries like our own, we know those rules and can implement them with no problem, but doing the research for other countries is a time consuming task for us, with the risk that we'll still misunderstand the rules and implement the license plates for some countries incorrectly.

That's where the idea to approach our community and ask for help on collecting this know-how came to us. We would be very grateful for any pointers or URLs of documents that may help us, or explanations that you can provide, on how to compose believable license plates for vehicles in the various countries in Europe, mostly those present in the game already. Especially if you could point out if there are any things to pay special attention to, like differences between front and back plates, possibly differences between trucks and passenger cars and again if anything special is in place just for trailers, license plates differences as they are issued in different years etc, all this could help us to create a world which will be more believable when you drive though it.

If you have something useful to suggest, please mention it in a comment to this blog post, or alternatively send it to us by mail to info [at] scssoft [dot] com.

Here is a short movie as a way to saying thank you very much in advance..

Dude chill down! At least they are doing things, they keep in touch with us and trying to make the game as good as they can, and what's your point with the snow anyway? I bet that after the relase there will arrive the first snow mods in no time!

well, i appreciate their effort, i didnt offend anyone, i just said i wish they focused more on the crucial things, and btw, there is no suck thing in English as " chill down ". there is " chill out " and " calm down " , so use only one of them, dont mix them together ;D

anyone home????You dont release the game because you dont have plates for the cars?are you stupid,or pretend to be one?Put a fucking in game editor and everyone could make his own plate as he wish and everyone would be happy.Unless the in game police,has a problem with this.might be hard for them to catch the criminal.xaxaxaxai am afraid you ll have detailed plates,detailed trees,fucked up sound and fucked up driving simulation.We dont give a damn shit about plates.We care about driving simulation,sounds and customizing.

NO, YOU DONT CARE, and about what you say about the driving simulation. have you ever PLAYED STDS, it has the same driving simulation and it's not comparible to the old one they had.also 1 month before the release they are only bug fixing, beta testing, and adding small details like this. not adding completely new features that give new bugs, and more time(wich gives more unhappy people(nelutu) wich gives more piracy. they are making this game for 2 years now and they are finally ready with it. just shut up bout your snow because it's not going to get in. Yes SCS can make a snow texture but when your truck doesn't slide in the snow you all complain about that there are no physics.

go to http://trucksimulationmods.com/index.php?/topic/255-100mph-1609344kph-truck-speed-limiter/

Download it. (need to register on the forum)

Open up the zip file, inside is a readme.txt to tell you how to install it.

Extract the zzzzzzzzoom_100mph_speed_limiter.scs to your STDS “mod” folder (shown on your first image)

You can open zzzzzzzzoom_100mph_speed_limiter.scs with winzip or winrar, inside you will find game_data.sii, you can open game_data.sii with windows notepad or wordpad (better) to change the speed setting to what you want, then put it back in the .scs file in the same place.

Wow, amazing scenes in the video. I think the license plates are great too, nice detail. In the video, when the thunder went, I actually looked outside! It sounded so real! The fog and sunset especially looked really nice, it looks like a lot of effort was put into it. No other company can match your quality SCS! I wish this video was longer though, I was disappointed when it was over :(

Lots of license plate here http://www.worldlicenceplates.com/general/XX_STDE.html and also visit http://www.euro-sign.com/european.shtml for more just one thing SCS please let us open the windows on the trucks its only a small feuture i hope these websites helped you.

There is no identification for any region so all the plates are the same: 4 numbers followed by 3 letters that go by alphabet order (AAA, AAB, AAC). I think the most recent plates are now starting with letter H. There is no difference between truck and car licences too.

Example: 3456 HAC

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4748/fotosa4099ip7.jpg

For trailers:

For trailers is simple too. All trailers heavier than 750kg. must have an independent red plate which goes on the left back side and copy of the tractor's plate on the right back side. The red trailer plate is aways starting with R followed by 4 numbers and 3 letters that go by alphabet order (AAA, AAB, AAC). I think the most recent trailer plates are now starting with letter D.

ETS2 license plates POLANDInstalling a font into the computer. In Poland we use this euroband (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/PL_license_plate_country_identification.jpeg/180px-PL_license_plate_country_identification.jpeg)

Nicely done with the numberplates, SCS, nice detail (to naysayers about being able to open the cab windows -- about as useful, but a very nice detail (c; ).

The links in the second post is good for Sweden, the only thing I can think of is probably irrelevant as it is that Sweden requires at least sidelights (?) on during day and of course full lights from dusk to dawn. Also minor details like taxi has black on yellow and a trailing, slightly small T and military has yellow on black but I doubt that will matter unless you plan invasions or errant Swedish taxis in Europe...

Nice video too, although the synchronised dance of the trees (the swaying of all trees in beat) takes away a lot of the impression, the grass looks much better in that respect. Like the (chance of) heavy mist, great job. (c:

Ok, I´m gonna tell you something about the license plates in Germany. On the left side is the normal blue box from the EU. The stars and "D" for "Deutschland". The comes 1-3 letters for the registration area. What letters this are you can see if you use the link of Lallo25. Then comes some letters and numbers for an individual code. You could have codes like A:B 123, A:B 1234, A:BC 12 A:BC 123, A:BC 1234, AB:C 123, AB:C 1234, AB:CD 12, AB:CD 123, AB:CD 1234, ABC:D 12, ABC:D 123, ABC:D 1234, ABC:DE 1, ABC:DE 12, ABC:DE 123. Motorcycles and cars with to little place for the normal plate could get shorter combinations. There could be little devitations in single registration areas for the usability of the combinations, but this would go to far, if you program the plates for every single area in Germany. ;-) And very important! Don´t write a "H" at the right side of the plate like you did on the MAN and Iveco in GTS! This letter in this position is for historical cars, trucks... that are older than 30 years. Questions?

ok i don't know if romania is gonna be in the game because i'm not following the blog from the beginning, but anyway here it is: the system is simple 2 letter 2 numbers 3 letters ex: SB 86 KXT where the first 2 letters are marking the region and the rest of them are coming in numerical and alphabetical order but those can be requested as pleased as preferential licence plates

There are quite a few country’s who use permutations of DIN 1451 (Mittelschrift) font if they are emboss alloy type plates, but they use different minor accents to the font type face as to how letters/numbers form or line stroke thickness.

If you want, I have ~20 ttf fonts I collected for making my STDS number plates which will also load into 3ds max as text shapes which (for me) was an easier way of altering font letters/numbers to get the specific shape accents, stroke thickness, it was also the easiest way to mix fonts of different types. If you want the fonts let me know.

Olav's License Plate Pictures is of use to, use country link then select “Current issues”http://www.olavsplates.com/country_index.html

The Wikipedia links others have posted are a good reference with some minor anomaly from translation.

Other linkshttp://www.leewardpro.com/articles/licplatefonts/font-din1451.html

I do know that with e.g. Poland you just don’t have the texture space to list anywhere near all the geographical references within the plate system so you’re going to have to pick a small selection of the geographical references letters.

There are a few countries who within the past 5 years have dropped the geographical reference system, but it’s mostly listed on the Wikipedia links.

e.g. of my STDS number plateshttp://webspace.ssesurf.co.uk/~m.todd/stds/STDS_Scandinavian_Baltic_Number_Plates_v1.0.zip

One thing is though I know you will use a 4:1 texture for the background but can you make the 3d “number plate” ~4.75:1 then only UVW map to the full width but only part of the height to ensure texel size remains square and not stretched. (i.e. a border top/bottom of the texture that is unused), or create a number plate “holder” border to utilise the full 4:1 texture with a 4:1 3d backing so the actual plate part still appears ~4.75:1 and Texel’s remain square (like I have done with may STDS ones above).

I think that ETS2 mention the possibility of getting off the publishing vehicle was one of the characteristics that would have the game. Until the video provided by SCS no softwere or ETS2 demonstrated. (((((THIS WILL BRING THE POSSIBILITY OF GAME OR NOT.)))))

I think that ETS2 mention the possibility of getting off the publishing vehicle was one of the characteristics that would have the game. Until the video provided by SCS no softwere or ETS2 demonstrated.

Well, I can say that if you are gonna include Swedish plates its gonna be soo easy. No special stuff or codes, only 3 letters and 3 numbers, Nothing in between but a space and the blue EU mark on the left side is optional. Numbers are 0 to 9 and letters are from A to X (as we speak) but excluded are: I, Q, V and Å, Ä, Ö

And the same rules applies for all vehicles on the Swedish roads (besides special ones like, diplomacy, military)

There are some pics of german regristration plateshttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfz-Kennzeichen_(Deutschland)

As some of the other germans said: on the left is the europe plate with a "D" for germany.Then the first 3 letters are for the city, but there could be only one or two letters. It depends on the city. For example Berlin has the letter "B" or Hamburg the letters "HH". After that there are the "tüv" plate that says that your vehicle is technically all right. Below that theres the plate of the state the city is in. For example Munich has the letter "M" then the "tüv" plate an then the plate for bavaria. After that there are two or three letters and then max. four numbers. The owner of the car can choose them for himself or they are chosen randomly.

There are never three letters after the plate.Oh, and i forgot something in my first post. On the front plate is no "Tüv"-plaque, there is just the plaque of the registration area. The plaque isn´t allways from bavaria of course. The other countries of germany have there own plaques. But this goes to much in detail i think, so just choose one plaque.

Basicsthere are 5 license plates:light blue with black letters: Only for taxishttp://www.autorijden.nl/images/kentekenplaat_taxi.jpg

Dark Blue with white letters: vehicles before 1 January 1978 looks like 93-85-NLhttp://www.rrsilverspirit.com/SilverShadow/Jaren/Rotterdam/RRSS%201970%20SRX7892%2075-80%20V.jpg

Green with white or black letters: only for dealerships.http://www.koetshoogkerk.nl/handelaar.jpg

White with black letters: it's for a trailer under 750kg, the same characters as the pulling vehicle.Trailers over 750kg have their own yellow+black license plate as stated below.http://www.aanhangwagens.nl/P7140066heijnen.JPG

Yellow With black letters: looks like xx-xx-xx and xx-xxx-x. Reserved license plates:starts with AA: For the royal familystarts with AF, RC: Allied Joint Force Command BrunssemB: commercial vehicle (like an Mercedes-benz Sprinter or Vito)CD: DiplomatsCDJ: international Court of JusticeKA, KL to KZ, LM,LO,LU,MC: Defence BN,GN: Vehicles who don't belong to the dutch vehicle fleet, like embassy staffGV: tractors who don't need a license plate in the netherlands but do in other countries. Like a farmer who owns a bit of land on the other side of the Dutch-german borderM: MotorcyclesO: Trailers weighing more than 10.000kg (unloaded)V: commercial vehicles under 3.500kg (unloaded)W: trailersZZ: vehicle who have special clearence like trolleybusesF: license plate for 1 dayHA,FH: are for dealer ships, note that they have different colorshttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Kenteken-cd.jpg/800px-Kenteken-cd.jpg

*there is NO difference between front and back plates.* all plates have a blue square with the EU stars and NL.*these are the basics, there are more

Why so extensive, ETS wont feature cars with a light trailer, no Diplomat vehicles, no royal family and no tractors.And, the information provided is wrong, W is used for small trailer, above 750kg, for example a caravan.A trailer uses the O (Oplegger = Trailer).

I already sent a mail with the complete list of useful dutch rules, so no need for another dutch explanation.

Detail: License plates on cars are indeed XX-XX-XX. Only in the following combinations:AA-00-AAAA-AA-0000-AA-AAVowels are not used in Dutch license plates, exceptions not included. Since 2008 in the Netherlands there is a new combination, indeed XX-XXX-X:00-AAA-0No vowels again.License plates of trucks are starting with a B and are only possible in the BX-XX-00 combination. The license plates are publisched in alphabetical and numerical order.

Well if i do love your attention to detail (and the life you give to certain part of the game(harvester...)), i'm worried after seeing the video in your previous entry...You show a rest area on the highway (at the beginning) for 24h but if the road seem quite animated , the parking is dead...it would have been nice to make the truck leave and another replace it after some time...i'm picky about it but during the video, it was almost shocking for me ;)And again, in the previous video, you show a company(for almost 24h) but we see no truck getting in...i was hoping to see the "pedal to the metal" touch (with driver taking their deliveries)...Noneless, it's looking really beautiful and if the gameplay is as good as STDS, i'm gonna love it!

For Spain, extending the information previously posted, I must say that plates do NOT have any vocals (a,e,i,o,u) in them, to avoid combinations of characters that match dictionary words, or possible offensive things. So you won't see a plate with the combination "UNO" (meaning "one").

If I were you, I would start from "G", a plate from year 2008 aproximately. I don't know if there are any legal problems when using REAL plates.. if you don't want this to happen you can just use a vocal in some of the positions, for something like GHA, so it will be non-existant plate. Using 2 consonants in the first 2 slots and only vocals in the third, gives a lot of combinations I guess. But well.. you know, maybe people also gets bored of seeing all plates ending by a,e,i,o,u. Up to you.

Despite it is EURO Truck Simulator, the devs managed to put an American SD-40 locomotive in the game... Seriously, how could you pick just an American loco, despite there are so many European locomotives to choose from...? This is ridiculous, a joke... Euro Truck Simulator bt US locomotives running up and down... epic fail...

I don't think Finland is part of the game (would be cool, tho :D), but if you for some reason want to have a Finnish car running around, the formula is probably the simplest in the world: Blue EU-plate with FIN and black-onwhite three letters a dash and three numbers. XNF-312 (that's my license number ^^)

As you can see from all the answers there are lots of people interested in details. If I were moderating this blog I would have deleted your post. Please stay patient. "aaarrgghhhhh!!!" doesn´t sound nice.

In addition to this, the trailer must have on rear right side the plate of the tractor, and on the rear left side a plate with red background with trailer's plate ('R 01234 BBB', starting alway by R, following the same rules as normal plates).

I thought of these too: Make some drivers be 'aggressive', a.k.a there's a 30% chance that in traffic near you is a driver who will have high beams on while there is oncoming traffic or someone who passes the intersection at the last moment.

Dutch truck lincence plates always begins with a B, then theres another letter, thats says the year of built, for example BZ, between january 2011 till july 2012. For the trailers, the lincence plates always begins with an O. As well as for the trucks, the second letter says the year of built. Currently new trailers has OLExamples:For truck: BX-HN-65For trailer: OL-65-HN

Yes, this is true. and In the netherlands the license plates are for the Special trailers (Heavy Duty, Low beds etc.) starting with ZZ-//-//this is realy nice on a special load in game so you have enough information for the netherlands here!Good Luck SCS!

I guess Norway is not in the game, but I might as well just tell what I know about their license plates anyway.

To start off, they look practically like this: http://www.licenseplates.tv/images/eecnorf.gif

It consists of two letters, and yes, they do have a system of which letters, but I'm pretty sure that wouldnt really matter here on the game anyway, so it could just be random letters from A-Z, I suppose.

For the numbers, Norway uses five (5) digits on the cars/trucks, and four (4)digits on the trailers and motorcycles, etc.

I hope this was helpful, although I doubt we will see Norway in the nearest future of ETS ;-)

I think that ETS2 mention the possibility of getting off the publishing vehicle was one of the characteristics that would have the game. Until the video provided by SCS no softwere or ETS2 demonstrated.

For normal plates first two letters are region code (first plate on picture). For trailers, region code is last two letters, you can see that on second plate on the picture with license plates. Last license plate (blue) is for police and that always start with "П".We hope you don't forget Balkan countries :-)

Okay, I'll tell you about the German plates. The first letter is the "D" for Deutschland in the European blue box with stars around it. Then there is the city name which can be up to three letters. E.g. "B" is for Berlin, "C" for Cottbus, "D" for Düsseldorf etc. Then there are these TüV circles, don't know much about them though. After that there are also up to two random letters like "AA" or "DH". Followed by that there are up to four numbers at the end of the license plate. Maximum there can be eight characters, so like if you have e.g. "HH" for Hamburg and then two letters like "GU", there can be a random number at the end with maximum four characters. If you have more than two letters for the city (max. 3) and already two characters as the random letters, you can only have a three digit number at the end. So it looks like this:

I'm sorry i cant help you with german plates, i dont know much about it ;) But i planned to do a fan art for your game, were should i send it that you can have a look at it? (Of course just if you like to have a look ^^)

Republic of Ireland has 26 counties or regions and quite possibly the easiest registration system in the world to understand. It's a universal system for cars and trucks also. It consists of a white plate front and back with the eu blue box stating IRL. Firstly two numbers give the year of registration eg 2007= 07 1998= 98 2012= 12 etc. after this is the county the vehicle was registered in C cork CN Cavan CW Carlow D Dublin DL donegal G Galway KY Kerry KK Kilkenny LD Longford LH Louth LS Laois LK limerick LM leitrim MO mayo MH Meath OY Offaly RN Roscommon SO Sligo TN or TS Tipperary WW Wicklow WD Waterford WX wexford WH Westmeath MN Monaghan CE Clare KE Kildare . After this a number from 1 to infinity is selected starting at one so you can never run out of registrations. Here's full examples: a 2008 vehicle from Galway would be 08 G 25356 or in Dublin in 2010 10 D 6465. I hope this has helped and I'll answer any questions for you :)

For the UK, the front licence plate is white and the rear is a gold/yellow colour. Nowadays, the registration is made up of: 2 letters, that represent where the vehicle was manufactured in the UK. Where I live the most common is DU - which stands for Deeside and area 'U'.

*NOTE: The letters I, J, Q, T, U and Z are not used as area codes.

Then there are two numbers representing the year of manufacture. For 2011 cars these are either '11' or '61' depending on when the vehicle was manufactured in the year. If a vehicle was manufactured between March 1st 2011 and August 31st 2011, then the year would be '11'. If the vehicle was manufactured between 1 September 2011 an 31 February 2012, then it would be '61'. Now we are in 2012, there is '12' and next month there will be '62'.

Basically think of it as two halves of a pie, taking 2012 as an example. The one half (March - August) have the last two digits of the year (20*12*). The other half (Sep-Feb) have the last two digits, +50 (12+50=62).

Lastly there are three random letters, to ensure each vehicle is unique.

*NOTE: The letters I and Q can NOT be used. Z can be used.

For a few examples - vehicles manufactured between Mar/2011 and Aug/2011 -

Date of manufacture has nothing to do with date of first registration,

date of first registration only gets a year related plate if a “certificate of newness” is presented which is a declaration from the manufacture that the vehicle is “new”,

“new” does not imply the vehicle was recently manufacture only that the vehicle has not been sold or had anything other than delivery mileage so could be >5 years since it rolled off the production line,

The year part of the plate only implies the year in which date of first registration took place and bears no relation to year of actual manufacture.

With trucks it’s not unusual to see e.g. 2009 model year vehicles manufactured in late 2008 or 2009 with 2011/2012 plates on if the truck is of a specialist type seldom sold .

The first 2 letters of the latest system represent the DVLA area office that first registration took place at and has no relationship to the place of manufacture or even the area it was sold.

if a vehicle is sold by the manufacture to a person who doesn’t require them to register it the certificate of newness gets sent to the DVLA to take the certificate out of circulation, if the person later decided to register it for the road and as there is no certificate of newness fond by the DVLA relating to the VIN the vehicle gets a number plate for “indeterminate age or origin” which is a plate starting with a “Q” using the old prior numbering system i.e. Q123 ABC for its of first registration.

A vehicle doesn’t have to have a registration number conforming to the newer system or even a year relating to its date of first registration, it can have an older number on it than its actual date of first registration year BUT is can never have a number newer than its first registration date to avoided misrepresenting (in cases “indeterminate age or origin” Q plates don’t apply)

ESTONIAN PLATES:First 3 are numbers, other 3 are letters, theres no difference between rear and front plates, both are the same.Example:http://www.redrock.ee/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image/fefd73add5c3f1c8670a65ce1314fb9c/2/0/2004_est_3.jpg

Hello SCS's everyone :I'm the truck player from Taiwan.Well,can the game translate in traditional Chinese?Cause simplified Chinese that in my country isnot used.The simplified Chinese uses only in China,for China players.If can translate in traditional Chinese,Ican give some help.Thanks

Thinking about all the rules for all the different country’s governing letter/number placement, geographic identifier’s or not, permutations of fonts, test & emission tags, regional flag/emblem, hyphens, holograms, plastic plates, alloy plates, low embossing, high embossing, embossing being the same colour as the txt or the same as the plate backing etc etc etc and given there is no need for thousands of permutations.

I recon it would be easier/quicker just to render 10 plates for each country, myself I have got 22 country’s number plate designs siting in 3ds max which to make 10 plates of each could be done in relatively short order.

After all there were only 5 number plates in Scania TDS so repetition is inevitable close to the player, while with 50 or 100+ plate repetition would hardly happen even in high traffic zones especially if there was a rolling sequential assignment to AI traffic as its created/culled in the 3d world.

If mipmaps were dropped from the .dds you could have quite a large number of plates per 1mb of space even if they were 2 to 4 times the size of the pates in Scania TDS so looked high quality with a longer legible distance.

Here are the license plates for Germany (maybe you have to use a Translater): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kfz-Kennzeichen_%28Deutschland%29#Aufbau

I can explain you the system a bit:At first there are 1 to 3 letters. They tell you, where the car is coming from (which town). If there is 1 letter, it`a very big town. If there are 2 letters, the town is a bit smaller. And if there are 3 letters, the town is small town.Then there come 2 letters, which can be chosen by your own. And on the end there are up to 4 letters, which can also be chosen by yourself.I hope this could help you.

nothern ireland if your are interested is easy enough to understand. first of all the plate at the front is plain and white. the rear plate is again plain and yellow. (both plates have only white or yellow background with only then numbers and letters. no smybols). to start it has 3 letters at the start which depend on which of the six counties the car was registrated in. here in fermanagh it was something ending in IL. for example, SIL7201. nowadays, it ends in IG. for example, IIG 7555. if you have any questions about irish of nothern irish plates reply to me.

Excuse me let me know if you had the license of daf and license plate of France are in this stile bd-321-fe (and department where he was registered and separate) and when the game come out in France thank you in advance

can't give you anny help but, I whant to ask about the speedometer, info-screen and speed signs in scania.tds. could you improve the quality of the numbers for the next patch? getting a little tired of all speed offences I get when not able to reed what the speed limit is :(

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